Whatever. I feel sorry for kid prodigies. Everyone ******** them up and making them drown in delusions. Eh.

I'm not saying your wrong or right BUT you may very well feel that because you are a westerner. They proved this with a well-known projective styled test (Thematic Apperception Test). Projection is when you project your personallity and feelings onto a situation and make assumptions based on those feelings.

For example, in one test both western and eastern children were asked to look at a photo of a young boy looking at a viloin. The children were then instructed to come up with a story about the photo.

Westerner Children were more likely to come up with stories that read like this:

"Tommy is looking at his violin. He hates the violin because he is tone deaf and can't even tune the stupid thing, much less play it. His father makes him practice because he says it's good for Tommy. Tommy is thinking about how he's going to get hold of an arc welder and ..."

Where as Eastern Children were more likely to write a story that reads like this one:

"Tommy is looking at his violin. He has just spent the last hour listening to a recording of a famous violinist. He is in awe of the sounds that he heard, and the thing he wants most in the world is to make sounds like that. He is imagining that he is playing in front of a packed concert hall. Everyone is listening the marvelous sounds he is making."

Once again, not saying your statment is wrong I just wanted to share something that I thought was both cool and fitting.

I think she got some degree of skill, and sure she may get her ideas and inspiration from other sources, but I don't think she's exactly a fake.

OK so she has a wonky view of religion. And that makes her SEEM fake. I get that. BUT she shouldn't be judged on that.

Meanwhile people are calling her fake because she can't draw with people looking. Like, I CANNOT draw when I know people are looking. My proportions begin to ******** up and I can't do poses as well as I can. That probably reflects on her, but probably not as much. I NEVER Let anyone see my work in my house or around me until I'm done with it or the sketch. On that we can't call 'fake' because it happens.

While I don't necessarily think she's a fraud, I'm not convinced that this is all genuine either.

The way some of the paintings are done, particularly in early years, have a weird combination of mark making. Some bits look as if someone who knew what they were doing made them, and other parts look purposefully flubbed.
One that really throws me off is the "My Grandmother" drawing dated from when she was apparently 5. It just feels so pieced together that I have a hard time believing that one person drew it. The eyes and head are shaped oddly, however then the jaw, mouth, and nose are closer to par with what I'd expect from someone who has studied human structure.

The subject matter in most of the paintings also feels very...stiff and contrived. As if the artist doesn't feel as connected to the content as a "religious vision" would suggest. Since I imagine someone would be pretty ******** attached to a religious aspect she clearly feels strongly about. They are also so consistent and unyielding in their style that they appear to be the work of someone who has already worked through their development stages and has settled into a way of working.

The only paintings that truly stand out to me are the more abstracted pieces that show up in the "Age 16 Sketches" portion of the website's gallery. Those ones feel much more genuine, and are extremely different from the rest of the paintings. They actually have some kind of emotion to them.

What I suspect is, the mother figured out that her daughter had some degree of ability and pushed her to paint certain subjects, and in a way that allowed her to treat her daughter as a proxy for herself. I wouldn't be surprised if the girl was quite skilled, but was instructed on what to paint and how to paint it.

@Feymark: Anyway. It's like a person claiming to be a talented professional musician who deserves to be part of a famous orchestra... except s/he can only do it behind closed doors with no one watching.

Does that not sound at all suspicious?

If they really wanted to prove that this girl can do it by herself, they'd take her to some state university, shut her in a room with some food, maybe a telephone, and a perfectly blank canvas. You know, kinda like a provable experiment.

I've seen plenty of really young kids who draw like that or even better than that. I think her stuff is really boring to look at, there's some kid in England (no idea what his name is) who's like 7 and paints about 1000000 times better than this girl. He's a little douchebag but damn that kid can paint.

Ohgod, I just fell out of my chair laughing. You've just reminded me of how Kenny Loggins killed Christmas!
Apologies, I'm totally off topic, but I don't think I can be coherent right now, too busy hyperventilating.